Five Children and Who
by robert.smith.9400984
Summary: When Jump City is threatened by space-time disturbances, the Teen Titans need some specialist advice... A tribute to two of my favourite shows of all.
1. Ragnaroctopus!

"Anything to report?"

Cyborg turned from the monitor as Robin stalked into the control room. His hunched shoulders spoke of a greater strain than usual. Starfire flew in after him, her brimming emerald eyes speaking eloquent volumes of concern.

"Nothing new," Cyborg replied. "We don't have enough to go on yet."

"Those dimensional disturbances must be following some sort of pattern. They must have a source, and we need to find it."

"The computers can't detect one," Cyborg told him for about the fifth time. "Take it easy. All we can do is wait."

Robin turned to where Raven was sitting in the lotus position on the sofa, her eyes closed as she attuned her spirit to wavelengths beyond the ken of ordinary mortals.

"Raven, anything?"

"Nothing new," she said impassively. "In fact there's still nothing to say these disturbances aren't just natural phenomena."

"That coincidentally started just after a spate of high-technology thefts? No, the phenomena are being created by somebody for a reason, and we have to find out what it is. But to do that, we have to trace them."

"We've got the whole city under constant scan for space-time disturbances," Cyborg reassured him. "As soon as anything happens, we'll know."

The doors whizzed open and Beast Boy shambled through them, yawning.

"Morning. What's new?"

"Nothing," said Robin through gritted teeth. "And it's twelve oh eight PM – that's afternoon, Beast Boy."

"Hey, don't bite my head off," said Beast Boy, sinking his fangs into a tofu stick. "I don't know what you're so worried about. Space, time, dimensions, blah, blah... it'll sort itself out. There's no need to get antsy."

"Well, forgive me for being a little 'antsy' about something which could potentially destroy the whole of reality, never mind this planet!"

"Oh... try to have calmness and the peace of mind, Robin," said Starfire, wringing her hands in discomfort at his mood. "Something will happen soon, you will see."

Right on cue, the red alert went off. Cyborg sprang to the console.

"The scanners are going crazy!" he shouted. "What just happened?"

"Trouble!" Robin snarled, glaring at the monitor.

A large blue box had just appeared out of thin air on the junction of Fifth and Lombard.

# # # #

A mad dash across town brought the Titans on the scene within minutes, although by then the crowd of bystanders drawn by the box's strange apparition had already lost interest and moved on (Jump City's citizens were used to seeing stranger things than this on a weekly basis). The box was fairly ordinary-looking: an upright blue cabinet with a light on top and "Police Public Call Box" written on it, whatever that meant. But, more interestingly, a man and a woman had just emerged from it.

Robin swiftly evaluated the strangers. The man was wearing a long brown coat and multi-coloured scarf, and fiddling with a piece of machinery – possibly some sort of fiendish doomsday device – while the pale blonde woman, who was eccentrically clad in a pink tweed three-piece suit with a white rose in the buttonhole, was peering around curiously.

"Stop right there!" Robin shouted, unable to think of a witty quip because he didn't actually know anything about the two strangers or what they were planning. They ignored him totally. This was quite an uncommon experience for Robin; super-villains usually sat up and paid attention at this point...

"Universal transponder's still not registering anything," the Doctor was saying irritably. "Must be on the blink."

"Either that or we've landed in a different reality altogether," replied Romana.

"What?"

"Well, look around you. Do you notice anything… unusual?"

The Doctor looked around. They were standing in a brightly-coloured drawing of a busy city street, possibly representing a metropolis on the west coast of America. Nearby, five dramatically-rendered drawings of young people were adopting combat positions and staring at them in a hostile manner.

He grunted, and resumed fiddling with the transponder.

"So?" Romana insisted. "What do you think?"

"Well…" he shrugged, "As cartoon worlds go it's rather two-dimensional, wouldn't you say? A bit lacking when you're used to having all four."

"Doctor!" Romana hissed in a stage whisper. "It's not their fault these people are two-dimensional. Do try to be a little more sensitive!"

"Hmm?"

"Drawings have feelings too, you know!" Romana muttered urgently in his ear.

"What are they talking about?" wondered Cyborg, as the Titans looked at each other in puzzlement. The others could only shrug.

"There is something kind of funny about them," said Beast Boy, rubbing his head as if trying to make his brain work. "I just can't get my head around it."

"Yeah… as though there's more to them than it appears," said Robin, narrowing his eyes.

"Come along, K-9," called the Doctor, "it seems safe enough for you out here: no stairs, peat bogs, swamps, shingle beaches, lava flows or unrestricted speed zones."

As the assembled Titans gawked, a strangely-shaped metal box came grinding out of the blue cabinet on caterpillar tracks.

"_What_ is that?" Raven asked in a coldly disbelieving tone of voice.

"Now I've seen everything," laughed Cyborg.

"Sweet, a robot dog!" yelped Beast Boy, and turned into a green approximation of the newcomer.

"Spatial anomaly detected, Master," said the robot dog in a squeaky voice, ignoring Beast Boy, who was sniffing around his rear antenna in a friendly manner. "Less than the requisite number of dimensions registered."

"Don't be rude, K-9, we're in a different universe altogether! You don't go into someone else's house and criticise the spatial dimensions of their carpets, do you?"

"Dimensional aesthetics of carpets not among my critical functions, Master."

"Of course you don't." Turning to the Titans, the Doctor gave them a wave and a beaming, toothy smile. "Hello there! I'm the Doctor, and this is Romana. I don't suppose any of you have a universal transponder we could borrow?"

# # # #

A short while later, after some brief introductions had been made, it was obvious the strangers weren't doing any harm just yet, but Robin still felt like keeping a close eye on them. Besides, if they really were from another universe, it was the Teen Titans' duty to show them some hospitality after their long journey. Thus they had all ended up back at the tower. The Doctor and Romana had spent much of the journey squabbling in the back of the T-car.

"I still think it was a silly idea to drop out of our own reality just to escape from the Black Guardian," Romana had been saying. "It's taking us simply ages to get back."

"Don't let's go over all that again," the Doctor had replied.

"But –"

"Sh-sh-sh!" The Doctor's shushing was an explosive sound, not unlike a firework making a rather juddery take-off.

"What is it, Doctor?!"

"Sorry, I thought I heard the stirring of eldritch energies from the dawn of time, or thereabouts. Did that sound like eldritch stirring to you?"

"I didn't hear anything, Doctor. You're changing the subject!"

"Hmm." The Doctor pulled a face. "Must've been my imagination."

Robin wasn't sure what to make of that conversation, but he certainly had a few questions he wanted to put to the Doctor. As soon as they got in the front door, however, the Doctor had plonked himself down at the main computer console and started reading their files.

"Do you mind?!" exclaimed Robin with a certain amount of agitation. "Those are top secret! You shouldn't even be able to get into them."

"I do beg your pardon," the Doctor replied affably, "I'm being a frightfully bad houseguest. Ah!"

"What?"

"I see this area has been suffering from temporal fibrillations recently."

"Yes..."

"Temporal fibrillations that started right after a series of thefts from high-tech laboratories in the same city. Rather a coincidence, wouldn't you say?"

"No, I wouldn't," said Robin. "We think the two things are connected."

"I think you might be right. So what have you done about it?"

"Nothing, yet: the computer hasn't been able to trace the source of the disturbances."

"Your computer might not be able to, but I dare say ours can," said the Doctor, turning back to the monitor. "Download and analyse this data, K-9."

"Affirmative, Master."

The robot dog rolled up to the computer console, and a red plastic disc extended out from his head on a telescopic stalk and connected to the circuitry. Streams of code began flickering on the monitor as it was transferred.

"Yo, dawg!" exclaimed Cyborg, "What are you doing to my mainframe?"

"It's alright, really," Romana reassured the Teen Titans with a bright smile, "we run into this sort of thing all the time. This is our department."

"About that," said Robin. "You still haven't explained who you really are or what you're doing here."

"We're really the Doctor, Romana and K-9," said Romana. "We told you. As for what we're doing here, well – we usually just turn up in places. And when we get there we usually end up helping people. Would you like some help?"

"Umm..." said Robin.

"Yes," chorused the others.

"Splendid!" said the Doctor. "Now, while K-9's digesting that little lot, why don't you fill us in a bit, hmm?"

"It started a few days ago," Cyborg told him. "We only found out that the robberies had happened afterwards, thanks to a tip-off. The targets were the three biggest firms in town, and they all wanted to keep it under wraps. S.T.A.R. Labs, Wayne Enterprises, LexCorp have all been hit. We're talking serious high-end technology: some of it's so cutting-edge, even the people who built it don't know what it's for, but it mainly came from the quantum physics and dimensional research side of things. We've told the other tech firms in town to step up their security, but whoever did it has probably got what they need already."

"And the first fibrillations in the space-time continuum were picked up yesterday?"

"That's right. We've had three so far. And I'm not sure exactly what scale you measure it on, but they seem to be getting bigger."

"So I saw. It looks as though some idiot is trying to build a dimension-slicer, something that can cut a hole in the fabric of space-time to another universe. He's thrown one together in a couple of days out of stolen bits and bobs, and judging from these readings he must be trying to get it to full power without bothering to synchronise the positron loop wavelength with the output."

"Dangerous," commented Romana.

"Very – and not only to him. But why? What's it all in aid of?"

"We're not sure," said Robin, "but Raven has a suspicion."

"The night before last I had a vision of disaster," Raven said. "Or possibly a premonition, I'm not sure. I'm a sorceress, you see..."

"A sorceress?" repeated Romana with an unmistakeable note of scepticism.

"Yes, a sorceress, Romana – they do exist, you know," said the Doctor, staring at Raven with some intensity. He leapt up from the chair and crossed the room in a few loping strides. "A vision, how interesting. Would you mind showing me?"

"How?" said Raven, looking up at him a little nervously as he towered over her.

"Just relax." Firmly, but gently, he cupped her face in his hands, and her cool purple eyes met his of wild blue. There was a breathless pause for a second, then: "contact," said the Doctor.

"Contact," Raven found herself replying.

Although to those watching nothing outwardly seemed to happen, there passed between them a sudden, fundamental understanding which Raven had never felt before. She felt she could easily be absorbed by it altogether, and all her secrets known; but it limited itself to what was uppermost in her mind, bringing back into full light the vision of horror and despair, of a hideous clawed and tentacled thing with one obscenely huge squidlike eye that stared down madly at a tiny world – tiny, yet crammed with souls in agony – which shuddered and came apart in the face of its bestial hunger.

The Doctor's mind withdrew, and as she came back to herself she needed a second to control her emotions.

"Well, Doctor?" said Romana.

"See for yourself."

The Doctor lightly touched Romana's face with his fingers. She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them again as he withdrew his hand.

"What do you think, Romana?"

"Very nasty. And rather familiar."

"That's what I thought, too."

"I've been trying to work out what the vision was showing me," said Raven. "And I can only think of one possibility: a legendary monster known as the Ragnaroctopus. But it seems so unlikely that I can't be sure I'm right."

"Tell us about it anyway," said the Doctor encouragingly, draping a friendly arm around her shoulders, and getting away with it through the sheer force of his personality.

"Out of all the ancient magical texts, there is only one that speaks of it," said Raven. "The Romanomicon of Caecilius Hortus Quaestor, which is known to us only through Al-Hazred's Arabic translation. Quaestor journeyed all around the known world searching for occult secrets. According to him, the legends of primitive tribes in the far north spoke of an octopus larger than the world, which could be summoned by a mystic charm fashioned from the sap of trees from the Indes which had been hardened in a furnace for seven days and nights. They referred to it as the Ragnaroctopus. The tribesmen thought that if the creature was summoned, the world would end."

"Sap from the trees of the Indes, hardened in a furnace," repeated the Doctor, nodding. "Of course: vulcanised rubber, a primitive form of plastic. That confirms it."

"Surely not, Doctor?" said Romana.

"I'm afraid so."

"But that means –"

"Yes. The Ragnaroctopus is none other than the Nestene Consciousness, in the form in which it has passed into the legends of this world."

"Then we're in a lot of trouble," said Romana with a shiver.

"Explain," Robin ordered them.

"We're dealing with a being we've encountered before, one that exists on a different plane of reality, the one the Doctor and I are from," said Romana. "You're familiar with the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics, which holds that at each unit of Planck time, decoherence occurs, and every possible eigenstate in each quantum superposition is actualised, each existing in a separate branch of reality – a parallel universe?"

Four out of the five Teen Titans nodded intelligently, while the fifth tried to stop his brain from dribbling out of his ears.

"Right, well, you'll have to abandon those simplistic preconceptions," continued Romana briskly. "It's far more complicated than that, so listen very carefully: the Doctor and I don't come from a universe parallel to this one; we come from one that's sort of above it." She waggled her hand above her head in order to give them a visual representation of a universe that existed sort of above another one.

"Yes. Your universe is, err... a sub-creation, generated by a systematic process of sustained mutual intellection on a higher-dimensional plane," said the Doctor, trying to avoid using the word 'fictional'. "A sort of offshoot from the prime reality."

"I knew it!" Beast Boy groaned, rubbing his head with a grimace. "Parallel universes, prime realities... I knew all this timey-wimey stuff would give me a headache."

"_Timey-wimey_?" growled the Doctor. But before he could remonstrate, they were interrupted by a high-pitched squeak from the other side of the room.

"Master! Mistress! Alert! Under attack from hostile lifeform!"

They looked round. K-9, his ears waggling in panic, was doing doughnuts around the floor trying to shake off Silkie, whose jaws were clamped round his tail. Starfire flew to the rescue, pulling the slavering mutant larva off his prey.

"Bad Silkie!" she chided. "Metallic canine creatures are not for eating!"

"Say thank you, K-9," said the Doctor, grinning at the spectacle.

"Gratitude sincerely offered," said an audibly relieved K-9. Starfire curtsied politely to him in mid-air.

"Sorry to be serious again for a second," drawled Raven, "but this 'Ragnaroctopus' – it's bad news, right?"

The Doctor's grin vanished. He thrust his hands into his pockets and stared moodily into space.

"Very. The Nestene Consciousness is one of the Great Old Ones, beings of awesome power which came into existence in the primal vortex soon after the moment of Creation. In our own reality its powers in the physical world are limited to the control of certain substances, such as polymers. But at this level of reality, its powers will be greatly enhanced. If our enemy, whoever he may be, succeeds in summoning it, the Ragnaroctopus will be capable of consuming your entire planet without a second thought."

"Then we have to stop it from being summoned!" exclaimed Robin, punching his fist into his other hand. "How long do we have?"

"Mars and Saturn are moving into close conjunction over the next few nights," put in Raven. "To the ancients, the two most ill-omened stars. And Sunday is June 6 of the year 2004."

"Is that relevant?" frowned Romana.

"The sixth day of the sixth month of a year whose digits add up to six. The number 666 is considered to have evil significance in the occult symbolism of this planet, Romana," the Doctor explained. "It's all very trite and obvious, but it adds up to one conclusion: we don't have long."

The solemnity of the moment was interrupted by another high-pitched shriek. They all looked round again. It wasn't K-9 this time: Starfire's eyes had gone white and round with terror, and a single enormous bead of sweat dripped into existence next to her head ("hmm, anime stylings," Romana noted). She was staring at where two sinister green tentacles were coiling down from the ceiling and creeping around Raven's shoulders! Raven rolled her eyes.

"Beast Boy…" she sighed.

In a sudden explosion of tentacles, an enormous green octopus dropped onto her head with a squelch.

"Raaah! I am the Ragnaroctopus! The universe will be mine! And I particularly like eating Ravens!" it roared, in Beast Boy's attempt at a deep, booming voice.

"Amazing," muttered Raven as a blast of dark energy shot him across the room. "Eight arms, but not a single brain cell."

"There's a time and a place, Beast Boy," frowned Robin.

"Well said, that man!" commented the Doctor. "There is indeed. How are you getting on, K-9?"

"Analysis complete, Master. Source of space-time disturbances located. Projecting results onto monitor."

"Good dog, K-9, good dog!"

"It's an underground bunker in the old scientific research complex, just outside the city limits," said Cyborg. "Recently disused."

"Looks like someone's found another use for it," said Robin. "We have to get there right away."

But even as he spoke, the red alert began flashing again.

"It's the Kronodyne Laboratories building," announced Cyborg, quickly scanning the readouts. "Robbery in progress."

"That's the other side of town – the only major tech lab in the city which hasn't already been hit," Robin noted.

"We should respond," urged Starfire. "People may be in danger."

"I agree," said Raven. "This may be our last chance to stop them. There can't be much else they need to steal."

"Er, excuse me." The Doctor cleared his throat apologetically. "We need to find the equipment which is causing the time disturbances right away. A primitive lash-up like that could destroy this planet by itself, quite apart from any eldritch abominations it might summon. Neutralising it has to be our priority."

"All three of you are right," said Robin. "We'll have to divide our forces. Star, you and Raven deal with the robbery – Cyborg, Beast Boy and I will handle the research complex. Titans, go!"

"You'd better go with them to the Kronodyne labs, Romana," said the Doctor. "I want to get to that bunker."

"Right, Doctor."

The Doctor crouched down next to K-9, putting one finger to his own lips and another against the dog's snout in order to forestall any complaints.

"K-9, you'll have to stay here and hold the fort – speed is of the essence. Sh-sh, don't argue! And play nicely with Silkie."

"Affirmative, Master."

"Well, come on, everybody!" the Doctor shouted, leaping back to his feet in a multi-coloured blur of decisive motion.

Pausing only to notice that everyone, including Romana, had already gone, he swept from the room.


	2. Enough Talk, Time For Action

A strong wind was blowing Romana's hair all over her face so fast that she was hardly able to brush it off again, and she was having difficulty maintaining her icy-cool poise – especially considering she was standing on a thin black disc of magical energy several hundred feet above the city's tarmac streets, hurtling through the air at great speed under the direction of a morose teenage witch. Romana was pretty open to new experiences, but there were several things she wasn't entirely comfortable with about this one.

Just after she, Starfire and Raven had departed on their mission, she had seen the Doctor and the others zooming off in the T-Car, the Doctor obviously having a whale of a time, leaning out of the passenger window with his hat clasped to his head for dear life and his scarf streaming out for several metres behind. A much more civilised way to travel, Romana thought enviously; and she wasn't usually a fan of ground cars.

They soon landed in the secure courtyard of the Kronodyne Laboratories complex. A huge hole had been blasted in the wall of the main building. Romana, Raven and Starfire entered through it into the network of corridors and workshops inside. The place seemed deserted; presumably all the staff had fled.

"We may have arrived too late to apprehend the thieves," said Starfire, "I fear they may already have absconded with what they came for."

"Oh well, you rarely catch a tafelshrew on Otherstide, as they say," said Romana philosophically, giving the quotation in the original Standard Gallifreyan.

"What did you say?" asked Starfire, looking at her in puzzlement.

"Oh, nothing. Just an old joke in the language of my world. I doubt you would've got it," smiled Romana – whereat Starfire's eyes narrowed a little.

Romana prided herself that her aristocratic hauteur, the ice-cool composure which she had learned in the very best Time Lord finishing schools, never failed in even the most lethal and mind-boggling circumstances. But it nearly deserted her when, without the slightest warning, Starfire landed in front of her, grabbed her, and gave her a long, firm kiss on the lips.

"She does that," Raven commented dryly, remembering the time she had been absorbed in a mystical text and accidentally said good morning to Starfire in Sanskrit.

Romana's self-possession was hanging by a thread as she disentangled herself from Starfire's embrace.

"Starfire," she said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear nervously, "I think we should get something clear. Of course I'm very flattered – you're a beautiful girl, probably – but there is the difference in our ages to be considered – I'm nearly a hundred and fifty, whereas you're about fifteen or so..."

"You misunderstand! The reason why we touched faces was so that I could comprehend the joke that you made," said Starfire in fluent Standard Gallifreyan. "But you were right: I do not get it," she added.

"It was funny because it actually is Otherstide today, relatively speaking; but I don't understand what kissing me has got to do with... hang on, what language were you just speaking?"

"It was not a kiss; it was a genetic transfer, through which I was able to learn your language."

"I'm sorry, Starfire, but that's preposterous!" snapped Romana, fed up with the way this reality kept thrusting Clarke's Law so rudely into her face (literally, in this instance). But Starfire just giggled and flew away.

"Come on," said Raven, "let's search this place."

# # # #

Across town, in the bunker outside the city limits, the other Teen Titans were grappling with a problem that the Doctor had become all too familiar with in seven hundred years of adventuring.

"How are we supposed to find the secret bad-guy hideout in this place?" demanded Beast Boy. "These corridors all look the same! We might be going round in circles and we wouldn't know it. And it's dark!"

"I'm reading energy field activity, but nothing I can home in on," Cyborg said, looking at his personal sensors. "The machinery could be shielded. In a place like this, I wouldn't be surprised if the shielding's built in."

"Ahm nt hffing mch lk eever," said the Doctor, who was juggling an etheric beam locator and a neutrino tube, so had transferred the sonic screwdriver to between his teeth.

"We'll have to split up," decided Robin. "Go separate ways, and if any of you finds the source of the disturbances, contact the others. Doctor, just temporarily, here's a spare communicator: you can reach any of us on it."

"Fank oo."

So they went off four separate ways. The Doctor selected a corridor and strode down it, stuffing scientific implements back into his pockets as he went. After several twists and turns he became aware that the air was starting to get colder. Walking a little more cautiously, he continued. Soon, in the near-darkness of the bunker, his keen eyes detected a glow that pulsed with the regularity of a heartbeat. It was emanating from somewhere up ahead. He proceeded down the corridor, following the pulsating lights, aware as he did so that the light which was leading him could be a deliberate lure into something very nasty.

"Come into my garden, said the octopus to the fly..." the Doctor mused. But there was no help for it: whatever was going on here had to be stopped, and that meant finding it... even if it wanted to be found.

The light grew brighter and brighter, until the Doctor reached an open door. It led to some kind of workshop, from which a humming and a bleeping emanated. He peeked round the frame of the door. There was no-one in sight, but the room was full of promising-looking machinery.

"Ah-ha. The octopus's garden."

Tucking his scarf back over his shoulder, the Doctor sidled cautiously into the workshop, keeping an eye out for eldritch tentacles (or other more prosaic perils), and giving the machinery the once-over as he did so.

In the centre of the room stood a large array of twisted metal tubing, underneath which was a box full of wires and blinking flashing lights: the source of the glow that had led him here. Up close, there was something strangely disturbing about the lights, and the weird pattern of their flashing had a faintly nightmarish quality. The Doctor recognised the characteristic sensory and emotional disturbance, and unmistakable psychic signature, associated with primal-vortex energies. He started to move towards the array for a closer look, but was brought up short by a cultured, sneering voice from behind him.

"Take a good look, my friend – it will undoubtedly be your last!"

# # # #

Romana, Starfire and Raven did the sensible thing and decided not to split up. Together they made their way through a lot of also-quite-samey corridors, moving deeper and deeper underground as they continued into the complex, encountering no-one at all. But eventually they came out onto a balcony overlooking a large vault, the floor of which thronged with activity. They quickly ducked behind cover to avoid being seen by those below.

They peeked carefully over the balcony wall down into the vault. It was full of masked figures, wearing all-over metallic light armour in a style reminiscent of ninjas. They were gathered in front of an interior door which obviously led to a further, more secure vault. Two of them were operating a machine covered with aerials pointing at the selfsame door.

"We were not too late after all," breathed Starfire. "We have arrived just in time."

"Whatever's in that vault is obviously what they're after," whispered Romana. "We need to get in there first. We'll have to distract them somehow, draw them off."

"There's no time for that," said Raven. "We'll just have to go through them."

"But there are about twenty of them, and only three of us!"

"Correction: two of us," said Raven. "You stay here. This is our department."

"Um, are you quite sure about this? They're quite big... and that looks like power-armoured battledress."

Raven took off, swiftly followed by Starfire. Immediately the sound of gunshots, energy blasts and things crashing into other things filled the vault. Romana covered her eyes in despair.

"I can't watch," she lamented.

Even with her hands over her eyes, she could see green and (somehow) black lights flashing violently. Unable to resist, she peeked through her spread fingers. About ten of the ninjas were strewn around the floor, unconscious. Most of the rest were firing laser pistols into the air, trying and failing to hit the coruscating green flare that was zooming around above their heads hurling starbolts. The others were shooting ineffectively at a black shell of energy, which, as Romana watched, suddenly flew out at them in a wall, sending them all flying like skittles at a bowling alley. As the shell of black energy dissipated, Raven stood revealed inside. Her eyes met Romana's.

"Almost done," she said.

Romana grinned weakly and gave her a half-hearted wave.

As the fight continued, Romana saw a path clear through to the inner door. She made a break for it, picking her way through the debris and bodies. About halfway across, one of the masked ninjas suddenly landed in front of her, and she skidded to a halt. The ninja's eyes narrowed, and he thrust his laser pistol into Romana's face.

"I surrender!" Romana shouted, putting her hands up really high. The ninja paused, confused. A split second later, a large piece of metal swathed in dark energy crashed into him from the side and knocked him sprawling.

Romana looked sideways. Raven was standing there, the glow of power fading from her eyes. Starfire landed next to her with a style and grace that would have won full marks in any gymnastics floor exercise. They were both totally unruffled. Behind them, piles of unconscious enemy warriors could be glimpsed through the drifting smoke.

"Nice going," said Raven. "Pretending to surrender like that kept him busy long enough for me to come and finish him off."

"Yes, indeed – ahem," coughed Romana, who was now feeling slightly ruffled herself. "Thank you. Well done."

"Don't mention it," said Raven. "Now let's get into that vault."

"Leave it to me!" said Romana stoutly. She brought her sonic screwdriver to bear on the locking mechanism, and after a few seconds, the thick blast door creaked open.

"I could have opened that for you in half the time with magic," said Raven.

"Would it not have been simpler for me to tear the door off its hinges?" enquired Starfire with a puzzled frown.

Romana closed her eyes and counted to ten million very quickly.

"Yes. Either of those would have been quicker," she agreed.

Then, just to make the day even more frustrating, the booby-traps exploded.

# # # #

The voice came from a rather short man who was clad from head to foot in metallic armour, complete with a mask that was dramatically coloured to give the illusion that half his face was permanently in shadow. He was standing on a gantry overlooking the room with his hands behind his back, gazing down arrogantly at the Doctor. About a dozen similarly masked and armoured henchmen wielding laser pistols stood at his heels, awaiting his order to kill. The Doctor gazed arrogantly right back up at him.

"Ah," he said, "you must be the chap who's nursing an unhealthy obsession with giant celestial octopuses... or should I say octopi? Octopodes?" He thought for a second. "No, octopuses."

"Octopus," corrected the masked villain. "Singular. The Ragnaroctopus, to be precise. Summoning that glorious creature will be the greatest act of magick ever performed in the history of sentient life."

"I quite agree. Makes it rather a shame that there'll be no-one left alive to celebrate it with occasional verses, half-holidays, Ragnaroctopus Day parades, and all that sort of thing, doesn't it?" said the Doctor, thinking that just for once it might be worthwhile pointing out the obvious flaw in the villain's plan.

But, as he had suspected would happen, his interlocutor ignored him.

"I must admit," he continued, looking the Doctor up and down, "when the intruder alert went off, I was expecting a team of daring young superheroes, not a down-at-heel sideshow clown... but no matter. Whoever you are, you signed your own death warrant when you stumbled across my project. Destroy him, my minions!"

As the heavily-armed thugs advanced menacingly on him, the Doctor could barely suppress a grin of excitement. _Crumbs_, he thought, _perhaps I've really had it this time!_

It was exactly the same type of situation he got himself into every week – roughly every twenty to twenty-five minutes, in fact. Yet somehow, it never got any less thrilling...

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. Coronas of the Moon

Raven shielded herself in time to fend off the chunks of concrete that were blown out of the wall around the blast door, but the percussive force of the explosion still hurled her back. Romana and Starfire were hidden from view by billows of dust and smoke – and something else. There was a greenish tinge to the smoke-cloud. Realising what it was, Raven flew to the far end of the room.

"Starfire?" she called, fear for her friend giving her voice a slight tremor. "Are you okay? Listen, you mustn't breathe the gas!"

Starfire flew out of the murk with a pained expression on her face, coughing and spluttering.

"I already have – ahem! – and it tastes very nasty! But I do not think it is dangerous to Tamaranians, only to humans."

"Thank goodness, I was afraid you'd been poisoned."

"I, too, am pleased that you are uninjured. But," Starfire gasped suddenly, "where is our new friend, Romana?"

"Oh yeah..."

Raven conjured a small portal that sucked in the cloud of gas and smoke and blew it out again into the courtyard of the building, several floors above, to be dispersed safely by the wind. Now they could see a pile of metal and concrete fragments lying in front of the blast door where Romana had been standing. Starfire shrieked with dismay.

"Quickly, we must help her!" She flew over and began digging with her hands.

"Great. I could have just teleported us through the door, but oh no, she had to open it," Raven groused as she helped Starfire heave away the rubble. "Typical scientist. Some doors are supposed to stay closed!"

They soon unearthed Romana. She lay pale and still, her beautiful pink suit caked white with dust. At least she had avoided being crushed – but she had still caught the jet of nerve gas full in the face.

"She is not breathing! Oh, we are too late! If only we had been quicker, we could have – eeeek!"

Starfire squeaked in fright as Romana suddenly sat up, bringing the two of them nose-to-nose.

"We thought you were dead," said Raven, without a flicker of emotion.

"Respiratory bypass," Romana replied smugly. "It takes more than a bit of toxic gas to knock me for six."

"Useful ability," remarked Raven. "Witchcraft?"

"Time Lord," Romana corrected her.

# # # #

The Doctor backed away as the gun-toting henchmen advanced on him. Suddenly, they were brought up short by a familiar voice.

"Twelve against one? Not exactly a fair fight. Lucky we're here to even up the odds..."

Robin, Cyborg and Beast Boy had appeared in the doorway. The masked villain raised a hand to stop his henchmen's advance, and turned gloatingly to the new arrivals.

"Ah, the Teen Titans! I've been expecting you. I'm so glad you could make it; you're just in time to witness my plans come to fruition."

"And you are?" inquired Robin.

"I am Wizzard: Master of Sorcery, Lord of Occult Knowledge, Prince of Dark Magick. I expect my reputation precedes me?"

"Sorry, I've never heard of you."

"You may also know me as... Heatstroke the Exterminator!"

"Nope."

"What kind of a name is that, anyway?" asked Beast Boy sceptically.

"Silence!" shouted Wizzard, disgruntled. "So you presume to mock me? Pathetic children! Soon, everyone on this planet will know the name of Wizzard – once the mighty Ragnaroctopus has awoken from its sleep of aeons and consumed them!" (The Doctor rolled his eyes at this.)

"Sorry, Wizzard, but you're just dreaming," said Robin, unimpressed. "Titans, go!"

Robin, Cyborg and Beast Boy leapt into action. In response, Wizzard produced a rune-inscribed bo staff that crackled with sorcerous energy, twirled it around flashily, and hurled himself at them. More armoured henchmen began dropping into the workshop from the gantries above. Within seconds, the room was criss-crossed with laser bolts, sonic cannon blasts, magic fire, birdarangs, flying debris, and the unconscious bodies of Wizzard's thugs as they were headbutted high into the air by a green Triceratops which hadn't been there a minute ago.

Somehow everything missed the Doctor as he sauntered over to the dimensional array. Producing a jeweller's loupe (eyeglass), he began examining parts of it more closely, his sonic screwdriver whirring in his hand.

After a few seconds, Wizzard crashed down into a heap next to him, having been thwacked by a dinosaur tail. He clambered to his feet and stared nastily at the Doctor.

"Don't interfere with the summoning device!" he snapped.

"Why not? It's frightfully interesting."

"Because I built it, and I say so. Who are you, anyway?"

"My name's the Doctor, how do you do? Oh please, just a quick look."

"NO!" bellowed Wizzard, striking out like lightning with a blade. With one slice, the Doctor's sonic screwdriver was dimidiated (cut in half). The bulbous end tinkled on the floor as it rolled away.

"My screwdriver!" exclaimed the Doctor, boggling at it in dismay. The loupe popped out of his eye comically. "You've murdered it!"

"Indeed. And now I'll do the same to you."

But before Wizzard could make good on the threat, Robin crashed into him boots first, and they rolled away, fighting. The Doctor stared for a moment at the sparking stump in his hand, then shrugged and casually tossed it away.

"Luckily, hearts aren't the only thing I've got two of," he said to himself, producing another sonic screwdriver from the pocket of his trousers. He resumed his inspection of the summoning device.

"Frightfully interesting," he ingeminated (repeated).

# # # #

Inside the vault, Raven, Starfire and Romana found the equipment their adversaries had been so keen to get their hands on. It was a bit unimpressive to look at: a small plastic component floating in a suspensor field.

"Why, it's just a subspace oscillation-matrix harmonizer," said Romana. "How quaint. Right, let's smash it."

"We can't do that!" Raven exclaimed. "Vandalizing something is as bad as stealing it! We aren't the criminals here."

"We can hardly just leave it for those thugs to find, can we? They'll be coming round in a few minutes. We also can't take it with us to their base, where I assume we'll be going next, because that's exactly where they want it!"

An amplified voice boomed out of the loudspeakers, making them all jump.

"SPECIAL SECURITY POLICE! THE BUILDING IS SURROUNDED! YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND SURRENDER, THEN WE'RE COMING IN!"

"That solves that problem," said Romana. "The authorities will round up this lot and secure the vault, while we get going."

"We must hurry. Robin and the others are not answering their communicators. They are likely to need our assistance," said Starfire.

"I can take us to that derelict science park, but we'll have to find the others once we get there."

"I have a better idea," said Romana. "That machine covered with aerials outside the vault is a dimensional tunneller. Once they'd stolen the harmonizer they were obviously planning to use it to get back to their secret base instantly, and without leaving a trail. The co-ordinates must be pre-programmed; with that, I can take us right to where the enemy is."

"So if they can open holes in the fabric of space", said Raven, as Romana got to work on the device, "why did they bother breaking in through the wall upstairs?"

"Because they didn't know the internal layout of this complex before they got here. Dimensional tunnelling is very dangerous unless you know precisely where you're going. How would you like to spend the rest of your life with your molecules fused to a wall?"

"Well, I wouldn't like that," replied Raven, a touch acidly. "Although when I do it, that doesn't seem to be an issue."

"Yes, well… you're magic, aren't you?"

# # # #

His staff an invisible blur in his hands, Robin ploughed into the last three henchmen, knocking them senseless. He looked up. Wizzard was floating in mid-air, swathed in magical energy. A tyrannosaurus closed in on him, but he sent it flying with a bolt of lightning. It disappeared in mid-air and Beast Boy's tiny form spiralled away and landed upside down on a computer console.

"You may have dealt with my servants, Titans, but this was always about you and me," Wizzard was shouting with diabolical glee. "The city's 'heroic saviours'! Before this world is consumed, I wanted the pleasure of proving that my way – the unification of technology, sorcery, and ruthless will – is superior to your puny, orthodox heroism! I must thank you all for permitting me that satisfaction."

"Oh yeah?" grunted Cyborg, unleashing a volley from his sonic cannon. "Word of advice: you gotta beat us first."

Shrugging off the sonic blasts, Wizzard swung his staff in a wide arc, and with a flash the ground collapsed under Cyborg's feet, plunging him into the basement.

Robin fired his grappling line, curling it expertly around Wizzard's staff. The staff seemed to focus his powers; if he could only get it away from him…

A charge like an electric current ran from the staff along the line, melting the projector in Robin's hand and throwing him backwards with a painful shock. Wizzard laughed, easily batting away the green eagle that tried to swarm over his face.

"Enough of this!" he said. "The time for games is over. Hitherto, you have only seen a fraction of my true power." His voice dropped to a menacing growl. "But now…"

Even as Cyborg, Beast Boy and Robin were still scrambling to their feet to face him, Wizzard lashed out with his staff. An invisible force grabbed them and flung them back against the wall, where they hung helplessly, unable to move.

"I will kill you all now, but first you will witness the culmination of my plans: the summoning of the Ragnaroctopus to this plane of existence to consume our worthless reality! Everything I have done has been for the sake of that glorious moment! It will be –"

"All your Christmases come at once, yes?" supplied the Doctor, who had been conspicuous by his absence during the fighting of the past few minutes. He had picked up a length of cable that now emerged from the depths of the summoning device, and was toying with it nonchalantly. "Before you do that, can I ask one question? Have you ever stopped to consider the Ragnaroctopus's feelings in the matter? Don't you think it might prefer to stay up there in its own reality, swimming around happily in the cosmic aether?"

"The creature's feelings are irrelevant," replied Wizzard. "It shall obey my will."

"And your will is for it to come down here and eat you?"

"Can you think of a better way to die?"

"There's just no answer to that," said the Doctor, half laughing. As if dismissing Wizzard, he strolled casually away, ending up near a control panel on the wall. "I can honestly say this is the most insane scheme I've ever had to thwart."

Suddenly, so fast that the others in the room could hardly register it, he was all motion. Slamming the cable into a wall socket, he began tapping buttons on the control panel as if his life depended on it.

"What is he doing? Stop him!" screamed Wizzard.

A dazed henchman recovered enough to grab the Doctor, and grappled with him for a second, but the Doctor dispatched him with a powerful elbow to the face and finished inputting the control sequence. Robin stared, his nerves on tenterhooks. Had the Doctor come up with a miraculous last-second solution?

There was an expectant pause.

"Ah. Hmm." The Doctor looked intently at the panel, and then the cable. "Something _should_ have happened," he announced confidently.

"You are a pathetic fool, Doctor, and you have lost!" shouted Wizzard. "Now you, too, shall feel my power!"

He pointed dramatically, and a sorcerous blast smashed the Doctor into the wall and pinned him there. He struggled to move, but was stuck like a fly in a cobweb. Wizzard threw his head back and laughed.

"Nothing in the world can stop me now!" he cried. Which was tempting fate, in retrospect.

"Want to bet?" said a sarcastic voice. Wizzard looked round, and did a double-take. A dimensional gateway had opened in the air behind him. Silhouetted dramatically against the backdrop of its swirling maelstrom, doing quite shameless hero-poses, were three female figures.

"Raven! Starfire! You made it!" exclaimed Robin.

"Indeed! The robbery has been thwarted, and the final component is in safe hands!" said Starfire, her voice ringing with righteous determination.

"Who's this?" asked Raven, casting a laconic eye over Wizzard.

"Show the proper respect when you refer to me, girl, for I am Wizzard – Master of Sorcery, Lord of Occult Knowledge, Prince of Dark Magick!"

"Master of sorcery? Prince of dark magick?" said Raven, cracking a smile icy enough to chill the blood of far tougher villains. "Big titles, for such a small man. Let's see if you deserve them. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!"

She deflected away the paralysing blast that Wizzard shot at her and flew at him, unleashing a stream of sable energy. Magic fire leapt from Wizzard's staff to counter it. After a brief contest, Raven was thrown back, but before Wizzard could attack again, a fierce green ray from Starfire smashed him to the ground. He hurled himself back into the air and traded energy blasts with them both. Ethereal flames of all colours washed around the laboratory like seawater around an ocean grotto.

"Romana! The controls!" Using what little movement remained to him, the Doctor nodded frantically at the cable he had plugged into the wall panel. "You must reverse the polarity!"

With Wizzard distracted, Romana scurried round the edge of the room, ducking as stray starbolts blasted showers of sparks out of the wall around her. She reached the panel and set to work on it with her sonic screwdriver.

"Hurry, Romana!"

"Almost… there!"

For a split second, the room lit up like a lightning storm. Electricity crackled between the wire lattice of the summoning array and the ceiling – and suddenly, as if plucked by an unseen hand, Wizzard was snatched up through the air and crashed into the array, his staff dropping uselessly from his hand. Robin, Cyborg, Beast Boy and the Doctor all flopped to the floor as the power holding them was released. It was Wizzard's turn to be stuck fast by an invisible force; he thrashed around angrily.

"What is this? What have you done?"

"Just a little trick I learned on Aldebaran IV," said the Doctor breezily, dusting himself down. "Wait, I tell a lie – it was Aldebaran V."

"What trick?!"

"Well, you see, I deduced from the blueish sheen of your armour that it was made from a super-light ferritic 'blue steel' alloy popular with superpowered renegades in various parallel universes. I knew a powerful enough electromagnet would neutralise the energy fields that power it, and jam the psionic boosters in that staff of yours to boot. I simply ran a current through the dimensional flux array, converting it into an electromagnet, and whoosh… you were left high and dry."

"Once the polarity of the neutron flow was properly aligned, of course," said Romana archly.

"Impossible! Blue steel is completely gauss-neutral; it can't be magnetised!"

"Oh, but it can – when it's been subjected to the subtle molecular distortion which results from exposure to the eldritch energies of the primal vortex," the Doctor beamed.

"Science," tittered Beast Boy. "Cool. Hey Wizzard, what's the matter – feeling blue? No need to be stuck up about it!"

"Demagnetizing myself after Gizmo pulled that trick on me a few weeks back is feeling like a really good decision right now," Cyborg noted.

"Curse you, Doctor!" raged Wizzard.

"Oh don't worry, old chap, it can't be Christmas every day you know. Now then, we'd better dismantle this dimensional flux circuitry, to make sure no-one else can try the same thing as you." He bounded over to the arcane machinery surrounding the summoning device and began ripping it apart.

"Well, that was actually pretty easy," said Robin to the others, as in the background the Doctor started pulling bits and bobs out of the flux circuitry, examining them briefly, then hurling them over his shoulder. "Wizzard's thugs didn't put up too much of a fight."

"In their defence, they only outnumbered us by about twelve to one," said Raven.

"They're only human, after all," said Romana, understandingly.

"Yeah," said Beast Boy, "I was expecting them to be robots or other-dimensional beings or something – but they're just men in suits."

"Disappointing, isn't it?" said the Doctor. "Aha!" He had found what he was looking for in the entrails of the machine, and waved it in the air triumphantly. "A universal transponder! Just the ticket."

# # # #

Once the formalities were out of the way, and Wizzard and his men had been unmasked and carted off to jail, everyone went back to the tower for a post-battle, just-saved-the-world party. The Titans ordered in enough pizza, fried chicken and burritos for seven, and weren't too upset when the Doctor and Romana took one look at the fare and decided they weren't hungry. Over dinner and long into the evening, Titans and Time Lords recounted stories of their favourite adventures: battles fought, monsters and villains defeated, witticisms quipped. At some stage the Doctor produced a case of wine which he had procured from somewhere, and after stern admonitions to the Teen Titans not to drink it, he had kindly looked the other way. Things got even merrier after that, and the fight scenes were more loudly (and messily) acted out. After a few bottles the Doctor and Romana lost interest in reminiscing and began to tell each other jokes in a variety of foreign languages which only Raven laughed at, but seeing Raven laugh was unusual enough that it made the others laugh as well, so everything was fine. The night melted away into a happy, crepuscular blur.

One by one, the Titans crept silently to rest. Left alone, the Doctor and Romana settled down together in the huge window overlooking the sea and commenced to finish off the wine. While they were at it they poured K-9 a glass as well. ("Negative, Master; this unit is teetotal.")

"Well, I thought that adventure went rather well, don't you?" said Romana, tossing her fine blonde hair back over her shoulder cutely. "No casualties, no lives ruined, the villains are under lock and key and the planet's still in existence. All quite straightforward, really."

"Yes," agreed the Doctor. "Nowhere near as dangerous as that time a few realities back when Dr Drakken teamed up with The Hood and Lord Zedd and nearly conquered the solar system." The Doctor and Romana both shuddered at the memory. "Now that _was_ a tight spot. Lucky we had so much help sorting it out."

They sat in companionable silence for a while, watching the setting moon dissolve in the waters of the bay.

"_The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves/ the moon into salt tears_," proclaimed the Doctor, with slightly cross-eyed gravity. "But time – time's the thief, Romana. They're very young, aren't they?"

"I suppose so."

"They live in such an age of innocence, have you noticed? Rather like you and I have been doing, these past few years. I wonder how long it can last?"

"Whatever do you mean?"

"How long before whoever's writing this universe decides to rewrite it as something brighter and louder and full of in-jokes, but lacking its beauty and sincerity? And turns these wonderful characters into crude caricatures?" He fell silent, wrapped in one of his deepest glooms.

"You don't necessarily know that they will."

"You don't know human nature like I do. They're constantly inconstant. They're never happy with anything they make for long. They'd even do the same to us."

"You're very melancholy tonight. Merlot doesn't agree with you," Romana said, swishing her wine around the glass and staring into the red vortex it made. "Will we ever get back, do you think?"

"Oh, I should think so, one day," said the Doctor. "Tomorrow. Let's say tomorrow."

They sat up together until the cartoon sun rose.

# # # #

The next day, after the Titans had got themselves going (a tad later than usual), everybody congregated downtown on the corner of Fifth and Lombard to say their goodbyes. One of the team was feeling quite emotional about it; Starfire seized Romana and gave her a bruising hug.

"Oh, farewell, friend Romana! I shall never, ever forget our glorious alliance against the forces of the evil Wizzard! May you find joy and wonder in all the worlds and universes you visit on your travels – and may your grofnars always be free of vardlesnorts!"

"How sweet," said Romana, smiling indecipherably. "Happy times and places to you too, Starfire. It was a pleasure meeting you… and teaching you Gallifreyan. Bye, Raven."

"Bye," said Raven.

Romana disappeared into the blue box, K-9 following at her heels.

"Goodbye, goodbye," smiled the Doctor, waving regally to the others from the threshold of his time machine.

"Thanks for your help," said Robin. "Come back and visit us sometime."

"Yeah, it's been way cool!" exclaimed Beast Boy.

"I'd be delighted. One day, I shall come back – yes, one day... until then, you have a lovely, colourful world here; don't let anything nasty happen to it."

"Don't worry," said Robin, "it's in safe hands."

As the door closed behind the Doctor the assembled Titans could just hear him saying in his booming baritone: "No mistakes this time, Romana – we'll be home in time for tea!"

With a trumpeting roar and a flashing of light, the TARDIS dematerialised.


	4. Coda: A Game at Chess

Raven watched sunlight flickering on the waters of the lake. It was dancing as though it had been given an unexpected reprieve from winter's dark, had woken from a nightmare to find its whole life before it. Pathetic fallacy, she thought. But she could feel the unaccustomed sunlight stirring in her heart even so. Was this what peace felt like, she wondered?

Spring was turning into summer, alright. Somewhere a clock was striking eight, but a warm breeze was ruffling the trees across the lawn and stirring sweet aromas into the bright evening air. All these things she had lived with, but could not remember ever noticing before. Since the battle with her demonic father, Trigon, it was as though a whole new world was opening up.

Raven returned her attention to the board in front of her, and made up her mind. She concentrated for a second. A cocoon of black energy engulfed her queen and pushed it forward three squares.

She had been coming to the park for chess on and off for a couple of years now. The thought of playing outdoors with a lot of people watching had made Raven, a natural introvert, uncomfortable at first, but in the end her desire for competition had conquered her antisocial instincts. She just couldn't get a proper challenge at home; Cyborg, though good for an occasional bout, was not really up to her standard, and the others were just hopeless: Robin was too serious for board games, Starfire couldn't bear to let her pieces get captured, and Beast Boy... well...

Raven's eyes were caught by two butterflies chasing each other in long loops, buoyed up by the waves of heat that rose from the baked ground. As she watched them, she took another sip of herbal tea. Her opponent was drinking it out of an old Thermos which came with two cups, and upon discovering they both liked it he had offered her some. The flask was surprisingly capacious: they had drunk several cups and it hadn't run out yet. The butterflies soon flew out of sight, so she cast her eyes once again over the little man sitting opposite.

In most respects he did not stand out amongst the other middle-aged to elderly men who frequented the chess tables, whose eyes always lit up rather charmingly whenever Raven drifted incongruously into their midst. There was nothing particularly strange about the way he looked. He was dressed with somewhat shabby dignity in a brown suit, an old pullover with what looked like a question mark motif, and a silk paisley scarf and matching tie, and he wore a hat which he had doffed politely to her before sitting down. An umbrella with a red, question-mark-shaped handle leaned against the arm of his chair – okay, that was a little eccentric. But other than that, only his eyes were strange. At first they had looked a deep, dark hazel, but she kept seeing flashes of blue. During a previous game she had pointed this out.

"Your eyes are a strange colour," she had said forthrightly.

"So are yours," he had replied; and she had to admit that this was so.

They had played half a dozen games, she always choosing black and he taking white, and she hadn't won one yet, but they had been so compelling that she was feeling neither bored nor dispirited. Their first game had featured the Arkham Gambit variation of the Gotham Defence, in which, through a succession of discovered checks, the white e-pawn (the so-called "joker" pawn) is enabled to go on a rampage through the black queenside pieces before finally being stopped by the black knight. Although initially spectacular for white, the line is supposed to be worthless if black plays accurately: the "joker's" mad rampage turns out be self-defeating, because once it has been stopped the white pieces are left over-extended, out of position and ripe for the slaughter. Raven had played very accurately, ending up with a pawn on the second rank, poised to become a queen and finish her opponent off. But, with brilliant improvisation, he had produced a flurry of counterattacking moves that had to be beaten off. Eventually these ran out, and he had tamely shielded his king with a piece. Triumphantly Raven had promoted the pawn, only to realise he now had a very elegant forced mate with his remaining forces.

"I call that the Ace-Up-My-Sleeve Variation," he had quipped as her king toppled, mopping his brow with a paisley handkerchief in exaggerated relief.

Yes, the little man was a canny opponent; there was no doubt of that. But this time she had him, she was sure of it. They had embarked upon the New World System, Eternity Variation, which seemed to be his favourite line. They had played this opening several times already, but this time she had got him out of the textbook with a creative and innovative move that she had been calculating in the back of her mind for the past three hours. With great satisfaction, Raven had watched his brow crease at the unexpected turn the game had taken; he had visibly gulped. Now his knight was out on a limb; it would have to move, leaving her bishop unopposed on the long diagonal. With that, her mating attack would begin. It was daring, it was brilliant, it could not fail. It just depended on him retreating that knight.

"So," she said casually as he pored intently over the position, "do you live in Jump City, or are you just visiting?"

"Just re-visiting," he said. His Scots accent was rich and soft. "I was here once before, briefly, and I found it charming. I always meant to come back one day. That was many years ago."

"Oh, before my time, then."

"Well, time is relative," he said distractedly, his hand hovering over the knight, then withdrawing. "You know, I want to thank you," he announced suddenly.

"What for?"

"Just enjoying a game like this is something of a departure for me, recently. I seem to spend as much time setting chess problems – and solving them, of course – as I do playing. It's a very demanding art form, the chess problem. I once said as much to Vladimir Nabokov. 'Vlad, old friend', I said, 'a good chess problem is like a butterfly: beautiful, delicate, short-lived, but long in the making. There's a novel in that somewhere.'"

"You knew Vladimir Nabokov?" said Raven, surprised.

"Oh yes. Fascinating man. I've always been attracted to exiles." He looked frankly at her. His gaze was intense, but there was nothing intimidating about it.

"Could that be because you're something of an exile yourself?" she asked.

"Yes..." he said softly, half sighing and switching his stare to the middle distance.

"How long ago did you leave Scotland?" Raven asked, probing discreetly for the interesting and possibly sad life story she sensed beneath her opponent's ordinary-looking exterior.

"That's funny," he said, smiling faintly. "People usually think I come from somewhere in Ireland. No, it's been longer than I care to remember since I left home. I don't really think of it as home any more."

"They do say home is where the heart is," Raven remarked, which for some reason made him laugh.

He retreated his knight, leaving the kingside exposed. _Poker face, _Raven told herself, though she was turning cartwheels inside. Keeping her expression impassive, she began her attack, taking his bishop with hers and blasting her opponent's defences wide open.

He reached out, picked up his queen, and plonked it down beside her king.

"Check. And mate in three," he said.

Raven stared at the board. Her expression didn't budge, but black ethereal flames started flickering around her like an aura.

"Er, I don't wish to alarm you, but you seem to have caught fire," her opponent said, peering at her in concern that seemed so genuine, she couldn't help but laugh.

"Sorry," she said. "Just got bad-tempered for a moment. I really thought I'd won one at last. You're the best opponent I've ever played." He shrugged modestly and began re-setting the board.

"We didn't introduce ourselves," Raven continued. "We don't, round here; we just sit down and play. It's one of the reasons why I like it, because it's private and social at the same time. But you seem nice – and interesting. I've been hoping you'd tell me more about yourself."

As she finished speaking, she realised that she couldn't remember ever saying that much to anyone before. She felt the complex, bittersweet pang that comes with something important gained; the realisation that it had been missing up to now.

"You really don't recognise me, do you?" the little man said. "That's because I've become so adept at being secretive." He sighed, and she sensed he was feeling something bittersweet too, some complicated blend of loss and gain; and that on his side, there was rather more of the loss. An emotion-freighted moment stretched out like the half-set board between them.

"Recognise you?" she repeated. "We've met, then?"

He gently cupped her chin in one hand. Two strange pairs of eyes met across the chessboard.

"Contact," he said.

"Contact," she found herself replying.

Although to the other players and evening strollers in the park nothing outwardly seemed to happen, to Raven it was as though she had been swept up into some huge dark sky, vaster than midnight – or down, into an abyss star-bright and boundless; a secret realm that thrilled to a double heartbeat of clockwork and shadow, passion and mirth.

"I do know you," she realised. "I've known you a long time."

"Of course you do," he smiled, "I'm the Doctor."

She returned to herself, in her chair in the park at dusk, shivering but glad.

"Why have you come back?" she whispered. "Is there trouble? Evil on the attack again?"

"I came back because, when I was here last, I was invited back," the Doctor said. "No other reason."

Raven raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, if you must know – yes, I did have another motive," he admitted. "There were... loose ends."

"What kind of loose ends?"

"Things that, when I thought about them later, didn't quite add up. Wizzard, for instance. He didn't seem the most competent villain either of us had ever faced…"

"That's true," said Raven, with a smile.

"And yet he could happily have destroyed the entire world if we hadn't stopped him at the last second. Didn't you ever wonder how he came to hear of the Ragnaroctopus in the first place, when it only appears in one obscure Roman text? A text which doesn't mention that it comes from a higher plane of reality, or discuss how to summon it using technology?"

"So you think he had help?"

"I don't think, I wonder. Was there more going on that day than met the eye? Was there some hidden guiding hand? Were we all – you Titans, Romana and I, Wizzard, even the Ragnaroctopus itself – mere pawns in a cosmic chess game of infinite danger and complexity, with ramifications extending into both our universes, and beyond?"

He rested his chin on the handle of his umbrella and brooded darkly, his face in shadow beneath his hat as the twilight gathered around them.

Raven started laughing.

The Doctor stared at her, genuinely baffled.

"What was funny about that?" he asked.

"Oh, just... life isn't all doom and darkness, you know. Not every story is part of an arc. Sometimes you can just take them as they come. Perhaps you're right about the Ragnaroctopus, but you don't have to worry about it tonight. Come back with me to the Tower and have a catch-up with the others; I know they'd love to see you again."

The Doctor's face creased into a smile.

"You're absolutely right," he said. "Cosmic plots and schemes can wait. Perhaps I should adopt a sunnier outlook sometimes. You certainly seem to have. And if you don't mind, I'd love to hear that story."

Raven stood, and held out her hand.

"Come on, then," she said.

He took her proffered arm and allowed himself to be led away.

An unusual pair they made, the teenage girl with purple hair and the ancient old man with the question-mark umbrella, as they walked away across the park hand in hand, still standing out amongst the crowd even as the perspective changed, withdrawing to encompass the spires of the city, and the tower shaped like a giant T which stood before the westering sun upon a sea of light and flame; but it was clear to the observer, still keeping them in view as they dwindled, that however unalike they might be, however far apart the universes they came from, they were so much more the same than different – and that no matter what changes might come, what they represented could never be destroyed. And where they walked, the world around them became a little brighter.

Long ago on a Californian evening.

NEVER QUITE THE END...


End file.
